Saturday, July 30, 2011

War and the True Tragedy of the Commons28 July 2011by H. Patricia Hynes,

"A world that wants to make peace with the environment cannot continue to fight wars or to sacrifice human health and the earth's ecosystems preparing for them."

-Michael Renner, "War and Public Health"

The "Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett Hardin's 1968 controversial essay published in Science, essentially targeted overpopulation (read: poor women) as the prime threat to sustainable life on our finite earth. Hardin, and many who consumed this thesis, failed to single out the very small, but politically powerful, population responsible for a mammoth environmental impact - the military. Per capita, the military complex (read: powerful men) is the most polluting human population.

A well-glued solidarity between the military, national security advisors, civilian defense contractors, and elites of government has cloaked the extraordinary debt of pollution, destruction of land, and use of finite resources in the paternalistic mantle of national security.

Since the origins of recorded history, war chroniclers have told of tactical environmental destruction: destroying crops, forest, and infrastructure; polluting water supply and breaching dikes to flood enemy troops and fields; salting enemies' fields; catapulting infected blankets into enemy garrisons, and so on. During the American Civil War, a handful of Confederates attempted to burn down New York City and plotted both to poison the city's drinking water supply reservoir and to spread yellow fever throughout Washington, DC.[1] The Chinese government committed perhaps the single most destructive wartime act in history during Japan's 1937-1945 war against China. To deter the Japanese advance, the Chinese dynamited a dike near Chengchow, releasing impounded Yellow River water. Not only did the floodwaters drown the several thousand advancing Japanese soldiers, they also destroyed 4,000 villages, 11 cities, and several million hectares of farmland and killed several hundred thousand Chinese civilians.[2]

War breeds environmental destruction, and just as war victims and war tactics have changed in recent times, so also has the scale of environmental destruction from war. The casualties of war in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have shifted from combatant soldiers to innocent civilians, with an estimated nine civilian deaths for every soldier death. The locus of war has moved from battlefields to urban and rural population centers, causing massive numbers of residents to flee and imminent health crises of contaminated water, poor sanitation, inadequate health care, malnourishment, overcrowding, and sexual predation in refugee camps. Nearly half of the world's refugees - 4.73 million Afghanis and Iraqis - are fleeing US-led wars and ensuing civil conflicts in their countries.

Widespread conflict in populated rural areas jeopardizes vital public health campaigns. The North-South Sudanese conflict threatened the village-based public health campaign to eliminate the human parasite guinea worm because "war and neglect have made south Sudan the worm's last stronghold." All the villages where people caught guinea worm in 2010 were suffering armed conflicts; public health campaign staff and residents fled the fighting. With the conflict ending, the government hopes to eradicate guinea worm - "the peace dividend we can give the world," says the health minister responsible for the eradication program. more

Apart from raising the obvious questions that the writer displays in the leader, there were a couple of other things that caught my eye. The role played by our erstwhile top cop John, 'Integrity' Yates in this sorry saga of corruption and cover-up, and the other, just down the page slightly.

Why did UK police declare death of News of the World whistleblower “not suspicious?”
By Chris Marsden
20 July 2011

When the former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare was found dead Monday at his home in Watford, north of London, the immediate response of the Hertfordshire police was to issue a public statement declaring his death to be “unexplained but not thought to be suspicious.”

The statement is at the very least extraordinary, and at worst sinister in its implications.......

-

Hoare’s claims were passed on to the Metropolitan Police, who said he declined to give evidence. The Guardian’s Nick Davies paints a fuller picture more damaging to the police. He writes that Hoare was “offended when Scotland Yard's former assistant commissioner, John Yates, assigned officers to interview him, not as a witness but as a suspect. They told him anything he said could be used against him, and, to his credit, he refused to have anything to do with them.”

The Daily Mail ran a piece specifically seeking to dismiss any and all questions of possible wrongdoing in Hoare’s death. It described him as “a paranoid recluse who believed someone was out to get him,” citing an unnamed “friend and neighbour.”

The newspaper added that he had “spent much of the last weeks of his life ‘hiding’ in his flat with the curtains drawn.” It quoted Hoare’s friend as saying, “He would talk about someone from the Government coming to get him. He’d say to me, ‘If anyone comes by, don’t say I’m in.’”

Given that he was involved in a scandal that is threatening the government, the police and one of the world’s major news corporations—and the treatment already meted out to him—such caution was not paranoia, but common sense. Read full article

I find the details in this report quite staggering, but rather than have a big rant about America's vindictive, and in this case, the extraordinary pettiness displayed in the abuse of its power, I think I might just as well approach the story from a different angle.

Taken from my little collection of saved one-liners.

But then, no other government can hold a candle to the range and variety of enemies the U.S. has created from scratch as part of official policy.

But I think Jimmy Carr, although talking about Simon Cowell, puts it slightly more succinctly, just a case of swapping Cowell for the US.

Mexican Professor Not Allowed to Fly Over U.S. TerritoryBy Matthew Rothschild
July 28, 2010

A week ago, a distinguished leftwing professor in Mexico was trying to fly from Mexico City to Europe. But when she entered U.S. airspace very early on July 21, the U.S. government ordered the plane to return to Mexico because it considered her a security risk.

Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar is a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Puebla. She actively protested the privatization of water in Bolivia in 2000.

Gutierrez Aguilar objects strenuously to the actions of the U.S. government that ruined her travel plans.

Here’s her account of what happened.

“The flight was going normally until a little after midnight when the captain said that we would be returning to Monterrey because US airspace had been closed off,” she wrote. “To my major surprise, when we landed in the city a little past one in the morning on July 21, a flight attendant approached me and asked me to show identification. I showed it without any problems. . . . Once she saw my name she asked me to collect my things and accompany her to the door of the airplane. When I got to the door of the plane with all of my luggage there were a few Mexican federal police and two or three employees of Aeroméxico that asked me to identify myself again and to leave the plane. I told them I was not leaving until they explained to me what was going on. They said that ‘the United States government had refused the plane because I was on it.’ ”

Gutierrez Aguilar then said that Mexico’s “federal police, in a very intimidating way, asked me to hand over a copy of my passport to them.” After an hour and a half, they let her go.

“What I felt most deeply was a kind of shock, a deep vulnerability that basically pushed me to want to get to safety,” she wrote. “I also felt an endless anger: how could it be that they are taking me off of a plane? How can these ‘United States authorities’ behave with such despotism? Why are we tolerating it? How do we protect ourselves against these things that they can do to us with such impunity and insolence?”

Gutierrez Aguilar wants answers.

“We demand that US authorities explain the danger that would have been caused if the passenger in seat 17J had flown 30,000 feet above the United States,” she wrote. “We are asking our US friends and compañeros to help us. We want an explanation. How is this woman dangerous? How does she threaten the security of Mrs. Smith in Alabama or Miss Jones in Boston when the passenger would have been flying over their houses? We want these “authorities” to explain what they’re doing. We want them to explain to us how or why they decided what they decided, because their decisions are not only foolish, but also far too arbitrary.”

So I called the Department of Homeland Security. I tried Customs and Border Patrol first, and then was passed around to the Transportation Security Administration.

The TSA issued the following statement: “The United States has the authority to deny access to U.S. airspace. For security reasons, we will not discuss the details surrounding when or why access is denied.” The Progressive

I had rather hoped to run a second promised article, John Yates – the UK’s most bent copper in conjunction with the article below, alas that doesn't seem to have been forthcoming. Never mind, I'm sure I can lay my hands on enough merde to cobble together a John Yates post.

You can see a little of John Yates in this video discussed by Guardian journo Nick Davies, but it is at the 2min 20sec mark that we are treated to Andy Hayman's quite hilarious 'Not me Guv!' performance.

Andy Hayman sat before a government home affairs select committee on 12th July over the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World that he was charged with investigating in 2005 and, despite his barrow-boy-made-good persona and incredulous performance, lied through his teeth. We take a brief look at the history of the most bent copper the UK has produced in some time.

- Head of Met police internal anti-corruption Compliants Investigation Bureau CIB- Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary- Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Met police (which included the Anti-Terrorist Branch and Special Branch), the highest ranking officer responsible for counter-terrorism in the UK- Chairman of Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) drugs subcommittee

Hayman and his resignation from the force [2007]

Hayman resigned from the police in December 2007 over allegations about expense claims and improper conduct with a female member of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and a female Sergeant. He was being investigated by Metropolitan Police Authority professional standards committee about expenses which had been referred to them by auditors because they were significantly higher than those of other senior officers. He resigned before they reached a conclusion.

Hayman and Jean Charles de Menezes [2005]

The IPCC’s report on the assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 exonerated every police officer involved with the killing with sole exception of Andy Hayman. The report found “serious weaknesses” in the Metropolitan Police’s handling of information after the shooting. It revealed that Mr Hayman had briefed crime reporters on the day of the shooting that the dead man was not one of the 21st July suspects. However, that information was “deliberately withheld” from a press release he helped to write later on. The IPCC said that Mr Hayman’s actions were a cause of “serious concern” as he “chose to mislead the public by his actions” and referred the issue to the Metropolitan Police Authority with a recommendation that it take disciplinary action against Mr Hayman. Peter Herbert, a member of the authority, said: “I find it incredible and staggering that Andy Hayman claims that he cannot remember what he said . . . on that day, of all days.”

Hayman and the Forest Gate raid [2006]

Two brothers Mohammed Abdulkahar and Abul Koyair were innocent victims of the armed anti-terror raid on their home in Forest Gate, London, where one was shot by police and the other seriously assaulted. They were held for seven days before being released without charge. The police claim to have acted on ‘specific intelligence’ but never said what that intelligence was or indeed how they got is so wrong. There were 150 allegations by the eleven different people from the two raided houses of police misconduct and excessive physical force. Andy Hayman was in charge of the operation.

Interestingly Newham Monitoring Project were prescient in their assessment of the cover up of the bungled raid: “NMP has also told the Metropolitan Police Authority that if the unofficial briefings that appeared in the press following the Forest Gate raids as police sources were not officially orchestrated, then the Metropolitan Police is guilty of effectively condoning the actions of a small group of police officers who have anonymously fed information to the media in return either for cash, the conducting of inter-agency feuding between the Met and the security services over apportioning blame or simply in order to undermine the accountability of a public service”.

Hayman and illegally phone tapping his own officers [1999-2003]

An internal Metropolitan Police investigation was used as cover to listen in to dozens of private phone calls made by officers seeking legal advice from the National Black Police Association (NBPA). The case involved illegal phone taps on Chief Superintendent Ali Dizaei, whom the Met was investigating over corruption charges which proved to be unfounded. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, headed by a High Court judge, said that the reasons given by the Met to justify recording the private conversations were illegal. It is the first time in British legal history that the reasons used by the police or security services to justify phone tapping have been found to be unlawful. Operation Helios, the £7 million investigation, was under the direct control of Andy Hayman. An inquiry later found it may have been motivated by race.

Hayman and suspects being held for 90 days without charge [2005]

Hayman wrote a report in the form of a letter to the then New Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke laying out the need to increase detention for terror suspects from 14 days to 90 days. This was another “dodgy dossier” used to justify a political manoeuvre by Blair’s government.

Hayman and Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB) [2000]

The Metropolitan police’s much vaunted anti-corruption drive, which has been under way for six years, is now itself the subject of three inquiries because of allegations over the way it operates. The inquiries into the (CIB), two of them internal and one by an outside force, have been prompted by complaints that the anti-corruption squad, dubbed the Untouchables, used discredited methods to pursue serving and former officers.

They include entrapment operations; inducements to supergrasses; non-disclosure to the defence of vital documents in court cases; widespread breaches of laws regulating police evidence-gathering procedures; and double standards in the handling of complaints. Andy Hayman, director of the CIB, said it was not able to sustain the current effort and was reassessing its methods.

Hayman said: “We are operating within the criminal justice system but that is difficult because we are right at the cutting edge of policing.”He was keen to “push the parameters” of the system to be ahead of the officers being targeted. Cutting-edge methods used in the past include covert surveillance and bugging – inside homes, offices, squad cars and police stations.

Hayman and internal investigations (1)

He was subject to two internal investigations in 2007. The first was sparked after complaints that information about a series of anti-terror raids in Birmingham last February was leaked to the media in advance. Mr Hayman’s telephone records for the months before and after the raids were scrutinised and he was cleared of any blame. Investigators did, however, find details of the hundreds of ‘unexplained’ calls between Mr Hayman and the complaints commission official. She has now left the police watchdog and works for the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Hayman and internal investigations (2)

Hayman faced an investigation into his expenses claims and foreign trips with a woman police sergeant. He had been questioned over thousands of pounds spent on his police American Express card on hotel expenses and drinks for his staff. He had been asked to explain at least £15,000 in expenses that one Met official says included claims for “inordinate amounts” of drinking.

Records show that Hayman had spent substantially more than his boss, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, and other senior officers over the last few years. But it emerged that Hayman also had an Acpo Barclaycard, one of those covered by the review. One Met official said extra spending on the card amounted to “thousands of pounds”. Hayman decided to retire from the police force a month later.

Hayman and bugging MPs [2005/6]

British Muslim MP Sadiq Khan was bugged during his meetings with constituency member Baber Ahmed – under detention and fighting an extradition request from the US. Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad had eavesdropped on conversations between Khan and Ahmad at Woodhill prison, Milton Keynes, in 2005 and 2006 using a microphone hidden in a table. Following an enquiry by the chief surveillance commissioner, Sir Christopher Rose, responsibility for the act was apportioned to the then Met Police Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman.

Hayman on protesters [2011]

“Unless the police become more proactive in disrupting the activists before the event it will be impossible to ever stage a protest without it being infiltrated by extremist groups. The police must start to be more intrusive and active ahead of any planned illegal demonstration. By ruthlessly testing the open source information that is easily accessed they can start to aggressively target activists”.

Hayman and his views on corruption [2010]

In his Sunday Times [a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International] column about police corruption during his time when he was in charge of The Met police’s CIB anti-corruption unit:

“It is vital that the police are vigilant against corruption in their ranks”.

“But there are lessons for the Met: any skimping in disciplining rogue officers is simply storing up future trouble. The corrupt must be pursued without favour or fear, regardless of the repercussions”.

“There is little worse than a bent copper who mocks the law by abusing the privileged powers bestowed on him. It is for that reason that the expense and time spent on prosecuting is justified”. freedompress.org.uk

Friday, July 29, 2011

In light of the recent India nonsense, I thought it might make a timely reminder if I were to up a few sightings/suspects pics from the past.

Never forgetting for the moment the main protagonist responsible for proliferating the spread of all the misinformation and straw men that has been printed with such eagerness by the whores of Fleet Street these past four years.

I would be lax if I weren't to mention the deafening silence of three successive Prime Ministers, Leicester Constabulary and the Metropolitan Police Service during the whole of this time.

And to our friends in Fleet Street, or more precisely those late of Fleet Street, this:

As many of you will now find yourselves unrestricted by ties to News International, there must be some among you that are privy to vast amounts of unpublished, privileged or insider information. Why don't you make a name for yourself and blow the whistle on this shameful travesty and bring some bit of integrity back to, if not your profession, then at least to yourself.

And if the main street media won't publish you, then I'm sure there are many respectable blogs out there that would jump at the chance to expose McCann Crime Inc and all that have helped maintain this ongoing injustice that is the shame of this nation.

There are also plenty of other bloggers, who though may not be considered quite as respectable as some, and I include myself here, bloggers who would relish the opportunity to print the truth and be damned with the consequences.

Not for a minute though do I think there would be consequences in the slightest. The very last place on earth McCann inc. wants to find itself, no matter what firm of shysters they have hired, is the inside of a courtroom.

All it would take is a shot of honeymoon whisky (link dead) and a very firm, go and fuck yourself, and I don't think you would see a situation much different to this.

Though moving off the theme of the post, the information displayed on the two graphics below is as paramount as it is fundamental to this case. Ask yourself this; were you to employ such discrepancies in shall we say, trying to blag the police over your untaxed car, what do you think the likely outcome might be?

Up to press, I haven't witnessed any reason to change my long held belief, that justice in this case will never be achieved if we have to rely on due process. In fact the corruption that we have witnessed this last couple of weeks only goes to endorse that belief. Maintaining that I do, that any justice would come via a back door and be related to a peripheral issue. Is the present scandal that peripheral issue? We will have to wait and see; it's not like we aren't good at it.

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We aren’t writing about the investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann or any possible suspects: we don’t want to prejudice a legal process that is working in a most satisfactory way. - John Blacksmith

Read the Summers and Swan book if you want an impartial intelligent insight. It debunks conspiracy theorists amateur analysis - Jim Gamble

"I have seen no basis at any stage for challenging the integrity of the police."

Lord Justice Leveson - The Leveson Inquiry

We never take for granted the continued support and trust which Londoners feel for their Met.Bernard Hogan-Howe

Bush told reporters that “One day, people will look back at this moment in history and say, ‘Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.’

George W Bush on Iraq 2008

"It is sad that we live in a time when a talented and honourable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons," Bush said in Crawford, Texas.

''The effects of radiation do not come to people that are happy and laughing. They come to people that are weak-spirited, that brood and fret.''

“I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.”

Bush interview 60 Minutes 1/14/07

“All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” – John Hagee

''Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country... we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years.

We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs.''

Dana Rohrabacher (R) June 2011

''It's not natural for animals to eat each other, they have taken on the nature of Satan. What is natural for animals is to live in the way they were created in the Garden of Eden.''